Friends in a Cold Climate: Schiedam-6a

Jan worked for the municipality of Schiedam. He started his career in 1975 with the Public Works Department. He later moved internally to the mayor's office, which was part of the General Affairs department, General Affairs Secretariat. In this position he had to deal with "exchanges" and city twinning. As far as Schiedam was concerned, this was still in its infancy.

It started with an exchange between the Royal Schiedams Men's Choir Orpheus and a choir in Esslingen. The mayor of Esslingen proposed that Schiedam should join a circle of partner cities. In the 1960s, this proposal was submitted to the municipality of Schiedam, but the then mayor rejected it due to the war history. Years later the request was made again and exchanges were slowly organized. The Schiedam Community Foundation was commissioned to develop this further, which resulted in several exchanges.

It is doubtful to what extent Schiedam really thought about European unification. It seemed that people mainly enjoyed contacts with partner cities, without the deeper philosophy that cities like Esslingen had. They tried to transfer this philosophy to people who participated in exchanges, which was sometimes difficult. Initially, it mainly concerned young people, students, football clubs, choirs and dance clubs, who especially enjoyed going to Slovenia, for example, for a football tournament or to Esslingen for a singing performance.

Schiedam left the circle of partner cities, just as Neath had done earlier. This happened during a difficult period in Schiedam, when the mayor retired in 2006 after 22 years of service. The new mayor, who took over, arbitrarily ended the partner city projects within a year, because he considered them unnecessary and expensive. This decision was made even though long-term contacts with people from partner cities still existed. Jan states that majors and officials come and go. Carefully built contacts often survive the period that an administrator is active, according to Jan. Although he was given another position within the municipality in 2008, he still receives New Year's cards from Vienne.